


A Long Overdue Talk

by TheJediAreGay



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, But also not, Dick Grayson is Damian Wayne’s Parent, Gen, he's just oblivious sometimes, it's complicated - Freeform, they both just love Damian a lot okay???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJediAreGay/pseuds/TheJediAreGay
Summary: “He’s my son,” Bruce snaps.The anger flowing through Dick’s body reaches its peak when he hears those words leave Bruce’s mouth. His vision goes completely black and he screams. Oh, he screams.“He was my son first!”
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 5
Kudos: 341





	A Long Overdue Talk

**Author's Note:**

> This is #1 on my list of conversations that I think should happen between two characters in comics but that never ends up happening. I hope you all enjoy!  
> (also please excuse the fact that I cannot think of a good title name to save my life)

Dick doesn’t know how it started. How do any of his fights with Bruce start? It comes down to a collection of grievances gathered over time that snowball into an avalanche of rage, always coming out during a minor disagreement. He’s more willing to put up with Bruce’s control freak tendencies than he would like to admit, especially as he’s gotten older, but there always comes a time when he snaps.

And he will always, _always_ snap when it’s in defense of Damian.

“What he did was reckless and unacceptable,” Bruce insists for the hundredth time. “He’s lucky I only benched him for a week.”

Dick lets out a shaky sigh, trying to keep himself from lashing out even further. Screaming will only make Bruce scream back louder. Then it will dissolve into one of their infamous blowout fights and Dick will become so enraged he’ll storm out, refusing to answer Bruce’s calls for a week. He _needs_ to keep a lid on his temper this time, for Damian’s sake. But it’s so difficult to reign himself in when up against Bruce.

He would die for the man, but no one on this earth can make him as angry as Bruce does.

“It might have been reckless, but he had good intentions,” Dick retorts as calmly as possible. “He was just trying to save the hostages.”

“By offering himself up in their place? He could have _died_ , Dick.”

Dick can’t help the laugh that bubbles up inside him. It’s a mirthless chuckle, sounding bitter when it escapes his lips. Does Bruce think he doesn’t _know that_? Does he think he’s the only one who worries about Damian? The only difference is Dick knows how to express his concern without making Damian feel like he’s a failure as a Robin and as a son.

“That doesn’t mean you had to yell at him the way you did, Bruce!” he says, his voice increasing in volume. “It could have been a teachable moment! All Damian hears when you scream at him like that is that you don’t trust him.”

Bruce narrows his eyes at him, his expression darkening. Dick knows that look all too well. It’s _the_ look. The look of displeasure that could make most people cower before him. But Dick isn’t “most people”. He’s received that look too many times over the years for it to have any effect on him. In his early years as Robin, sure, it could make him stutter out apologies and promises to do better, but its lost its potency over the years. Bruce knows this. Dick just assumes the look has just become a habit by now.

“If he keeps insisting on disobeying me and going off on his own, then I _can’t_ trust him. Not in the field.”

And with that, Dick feels his resolve to keep his temper under control slipping.

“How could you say that?!” he shouts. “How could you say that when he trusts you enough to put his life in your hands every night? He would do _anything_ for you, Bruce!”

Bruce’s face remains stoic. Unmoved. He’s like a statue, and Dick can tell his words are going in one ear and out the other. It’s how their arguments usually go. He wants to reach out and throttle the older man until his words break through that thick skull of his.

“What he _needs_ to do is learn to follow direct orders,” he shoots back. “Otherwise he’s a liability.”

The self-righteous attitude that is so uniquely Bruce grates on Dick’s nerves. He’s spent most of his life subject to Bruce’s disapproving looks and lectures. He’s gotten into more screaming matches with him than he can count. But Damian is different. Dick has learned over the years how to speak Bruce’s language. He knows which looks mean “I’m angry at you” and which ones mean “I’m worried about you”. He knows the exact variation in Bruce’s shouts that tell the difference between rage and fear. He knows that Bruce does everything, first and foremost, out of love; whether that be love for Gotham or for his children or for humanity as a whole.

Damian _doesn’t_ know this. When he hears shouting or gets a withering glance thrown his way, he assumes he’s fallen out of Bruce’s favor. He still thinks he has to earn his place in the family. And damn if Dick isn’t tired of watching Damian break himself over and over again to win a love he doesn’t know he already has.

“He does what he thinks _you_ would do, Bruce! You have to sit him down and explain to him why what he did was wrong without making him feel like he’s committed some unpardonable sin in your eyes. He’s not going listen to you if you’re just gonna scream at him.”

“Damian doesn’t listen to me no matter what I say or how I say it,” Bruce snaps.

 _Oh_ , that does it. It’s like a rubber band snapping in Dick’s head, bouncing around his skull. He feels his entire body quiver from the force of his rage. All he sees when he looks at Bruce is _red_.

“ _He does listen!_ ” he shouts, as loudly as he dares. “He listens to every _fucking_ thing you say and he absorbs it all, and that’s what you don’t get! Because you don’t _get_ Damian!”

He’s barely conscious of what he’s saying anymore. The words just flow out of his mouth, dripping with malice. It’s like he’s disconnected from his body, listening to someone else speak.

“You don’t know him and you never made the effort to. You treat him like the adult he pretends to be instead of the fucking _10 year old kid_ that he is.”

His fists clench by his sides. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion. He’s not even aware of how Bruce is reacting to his tirade, because he can’t focus in on his face. All he can focus on is the rage spilling over inside of him that he can’t seem to quell. It spews from his mouth in the form of words he’s not conscious enough to realize he’ll regret later.

“You think he’s angry and violent and reckless because you refuse to take more than a single glance at him,” he hisses. “If you actually spent time with him outside of patrols then you would know he’s the most kind-hearted goddamn kid you could ever meet!”

How anyone looks at Damian and doesn’t see him in all his soft complexity is beyond Dick. But for one of those people to be _Bruce_? His heart breaks for his little brother.

“Maybe he was out of line trying to exchange his own life for those hostages, but he did it because he _cares_ about people, Bruce! But you just assumed it was all some elaborate plot to piss you off because you don’t know the first thing about him. Sometimes I think you don’t even care to know him.”

“He’s my son,” Bruce snaps.

The anger flowing through Dick’s body reaches its peak when he hears those words leave Bruce’s mouth. It bubbles up inside him like a volcano. If he was just releasing fumes before, now its lava that’s pouring from him. His vision goes completely black and he screams. He _screams_.

_“He was my son first!”_

Then he’s breathing heavily, coming down from a rage-filled high. The tremors are no longer from anger but fatigue. He feels as though he’s been holding his breath for the past 10 minutes. Finally, his vision clears.

The red has drained from his eyes and he can see Bruce clearly now. He watches in horror as Bruce’s expression shifts from pure shock to something more wounded. It’s a look he rarely sees on his adoptive father’s face. It’s _hurt_.

 _What have I done?_ he thinks desperately. _Why did I have to say that?_

The two stare at each other for a few long, drawn out moments. Dick feels paralyzed by guilt. He knows what he should do; apologize to Bruce. He should be down on his hands and knees, begging his forgiveness and praying he can forget what was just said. But he can’t do that.

He _meant_ what he said, no matter how shameful he may feel for voicing it.

In the end, it’s Bruce who breaks the silence.

“You never told me you felt this way.”

Dick wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. On what planet could he ever talk to Bruce about this in a normal, civilized manner? What would he even say? _‘Oh hey, just so you know, while you were taking your little vacation through the timestream, I stole your role as Batman_ and _as Damian’s father’?_

“I never planned on telling you,” he admits. “I didn’t want to… get in the way.”

He tells himself, as he told himself while he packed up his room in the penthouse, that it was for the best he went back to Blüdhaven. Damian deserves a relationship with the man he idolized his entire life. He deserves to have that connection to Bruce that Dick and Tim and Cass and even Jason have.

But no matter how much he forces himself into believing that, giving Damian back to Bruce still felt like he was ripping his own heart out and handing it to him.

Bruce purses his lips and lets his gaze fall to the ground in front of him. Dick realizes, with a touch of guilt, that Bruce simply doesn’t know what to say. It’s rare to see Bruce caught off guard by anything, and in any other situation, Dick would be proud to be the one who caused it. Right now, it just makes him feel like the worst person, the worst son, the worst _brother_ in the world.

Dick lets out a sigh and tries to collect his thoughts. He has so much to say, but he doesn’t know how to formulate all his feelings into something coherent, something Bruce would understand.

“I told myself I wasn’t going to take your place in Damian’s life,” he swears. “I told myself that I was just his partner and his big brother. But I…”

He shakes his head and runs a hand down his face. How does he explain this without hurting Bruce? How does he stop this secret from widening the already existing rift between Damian and his _real_ father?

“We patrolled together. We ate meals together. He sat up with me through the morning whenever I was injured. I convinced him to watch movies with me on Saturday nights. And I loved him.”

His throat tightens with the emotion he’s been trying to squash ever since Bruce came back. The urge to cry washes over him with a potency he hasn’t felt in a long time, but he holds it in.

“I loved him _so hard_ because no one else was going to and god, he tried to make it difficult for me. He tried to fight me into taking that love back, because all love ever did was hurt him.”

He remembers Damian’s outbursts; the screaming and the cursing and the vases thrown at the wall beside his head. He goaded him, declaring him not worthy enough to be Bruce’s successor, and disobeying him on patrol. He projected arrogance and spite, but Dick saw through the illusion. He saw the scared little boy underneath it all; the boy who had been taught that he had to fight just to earn the right to live. His violent tantrums were a test of Dick’s character. He thought if he pushed him far enough, Dick would send him packing. So Dick just loved him even more until he got the message that he’d never give up on him. _Never_.

Oh, he could be hard on him at times. He was firm, not letting Damian push him around. But that just made him feel even more like the parent he wasn’t supposed to be.

“He needed a father,” he whispers. “And I think… I think I needed him just as much as he needed me.”

Loving Damian had been a choice. It was a conscious decision Dick made. It did not come naturally, not when the boy he was trying to love was an arrogant, violent, unruly little assassin that seemed determined to make his life a living Hell. But after growing into their partnership and seeing the gentle heart Damian kept hidden beneath the surface, loving him became the easiest thing in the world.

Bruce stays silent, his brow furrowed in what Dick knows to be deep thought. He recognizes that look. And he’s terrified to hear whatever will come out of his mouth next.

The silence stretches on far too long for Dick’s comfort. Finally, Bruce gives him a curt nod.

“I understand.”

Dick takes a few moments to process Bruce’s words. He’d been expecting anger. Maybe shouting, or even worse, that cold, silent anger that Bruce is best at. But instead, he’s being met with... understanding. And he can tell by Bruce’s tone that he’s being genuine. There’s not even a shred of resentment in his words.

Dick has never been more confused.

“You... You _understand_?”

Bruce nods again.

“I wasn’t there,” he states. “You were Damian’s guardian. Of course you feel that way”

He says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. But it doesn’t _feel_ simple to Dick. He still can’t fathom why Bruce isn’t angry at him. He should be. Dick has been angry at himself over this for so long.

“I still feel like I...” he struggles to find the words. “Like I betrayed you somehow. Like I stole him from you.”

Sometimes he feels like he’s still stealing Damian from him. When Damian calls him to complain about Bruce, or when he picks Damian up to go to the arcade together on a weekend, or when Damian prefers patrolling with Nightwing over Batman, he feels almost as if nothing has changed.

But that’s wrong. He has no right to feel that way. _Everything_ has changed. Damian is no longer his, and he never really was in the first place.

Bruce raises an eyebrow.

“You love your real father,” he says.

“Yeah, of course,” Dick replies. “What does that have to do with...?”

“When I took you in,” Bruce interrupts. “I told myself I would never try to take on your father’s role. I thought it would be an insult to him and to you. But that didn’t stop you from becoming my son.”

Dick is starting to see where Bruce is taking this.

“John Grayson is no less your father just because I’m _also_ your father.”

It’s true. When Bruce first took him in, he considered his biological father to be his _only_ father. Bruce was just a guardian, a mentor. He loved him, but he thought there was only room in his heart for one dad. He thinks he was around 17 years old when he started to picture Bruce in his mind whenever the subject of fathers came up. At first, he was disgusted with himself. He thought he was spitting on his real father’s memory, letting someone else replace him. It took a few years, but he slowly came to accept that he could love one without betraying the other.

But his situation is different from Damian’s. John Grayson is dead, and he’s not coming back. Bruce, on the other hand, _did_ come back.

“Are you saying we’re both Damian’s dad?” he jokes half-heartedly.

He expects Bruce to crack that tiny smirk he does when he finds something funny or amusing, or to frown at him for his attempt at humor in this situation, but he maintains a straight face.

“I’m not saying you have to be anything to Damian that you don’t want to be,” he corrects him. “I’m always going to be Damian’s father, and I don’t feel threatened in that position. You’re not the one taking care of Damian anymore, I am.”

Bruce is only stating the facts, but his words still make something in Dick’s chest hurt. Again, something he doesn’t have a right to feel.

“But I recognize that those feelings you have won’t just go away,” Bruce continues. “And that’s... that’s alright, Dick.”

Dick runs a hand through his hair nervously. His mind is a jumbled mess, his feelings too complicated for even himself to fully understand them.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Dick sighs. “I’m not a father figure to him anymore, not really. I’m just a brother and I _act_ like a brother, but it was just...”

He can’t put it into words. One moment, he was living under the same roof as Damian, and the next, he was back in an apartment in Blüdhaven by himself. He had no idea how to readjust to his old life and forget the one he’d been living for nearly a year. Sometimes he still wakes up and thinks he’s going to stumble to the kitchen and see Damian there, munching on an apple and flipping through a book. Then he’ll remember where he is and feel a small, brief pang of sadness.

“The transition was just so sudden, you know?” he finishes.

Bruce nods in understanding, then reaches out and places a hand on Dick’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to define your relationship with Damian,” he insists. “You love him and he loves you. It can be as simple as that.”

Sometimes it amazes Dick how Bruce can possess such wisdom for someone who, quite frankly, has such little emotional intelligence. He says these things matter-of-factly, almost clinically. But he still has a way of making Dick feel like he’s being wrapped up in a metaphorical hug.

“Sometimes I miss the days when he was my Robin,” Dick admits quietly. “And I feel so guilty for it. I don’t miss thinking you were dead, but I miss...”

Bruce squeezes his shoulder before letting his hand fall away.

“I understand,” he reiterates.

The guilt that Dick was holding close to his heart melts away, and he feels like he can breathe a bit easier. His biggest fear in all this was hurting Bruce. He didn’t want the older man to think he was trying to push him out of his position as Damian’s father. He was afraid that Bruce would hate him for thinking of Damian when he hears the word “son”, just like he’d once hated himself for thinking of Bruce when he heard the word “dad”.

One slight, lingering twinge of guilt blooms in his chest for even thinking that Bruce would hate him for this. He’s looking at the same man who’s taken in four children from four different sets of parents and loved them all as his own.

For the first time in a long time, Dick feels like he and Bruce can truly empathize with each other.

“We’ll have to do our best not to step on each other’s toes,” Bruce continues. “You’ll leave the rules and discipline to me, and I’ll let him go to you when he wants an older brother to have fun with and complain to.”

Dick lets out a little laugh and nods. That’s one role he has in Damian’s life that hasn’t changed. And in all honesty, discipline was never his favorite aspect of parenting. He knows it isn’t Bruce’s, either.

“That won’t stop me from tearing you a new one if I think you’re being unfair to him,” he jokes.

Bruce gives him that tiny smirk that tells him he knows Dick is being serious. This hasn’t been their first fight over the proper way to handle Damian, and Dick doubts it’ll be their last. But he can tell Bruce is starting to take his advice into consideration a little more each time.

“Of course,” he agrees. “He’ll be home from the library soon if you want to take him to the arcade.”

“I will as long as you talk to him later and cut down on how long he’s benched for,” Dick promises.

Bruce nods in agreement. A small victory for Dick.

“Deal.”

They shake hands on it, and for once, a fight with Bruce ends without the sound of a slamming door.


End file.
